I am not, in general, a Tripadvisor kind of person, preferring to have my opinions untainted by the experiences of others. But, when it comes to going to the cinema, I won’t make a choice until I survey its score on the movie review aggregation site, Rotten Tomatoes.
And so it was a few days ago, when I was deciding whether to see the new Demi Moore film, The Substance, and I saw that it had a very impressive 90 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Decision made, and off I went, believing I was about to see something that was summed up as “audaciously gross, wickedly clever”, a “gasp-inducing” film that was “possibly Demi Moore’s finest hour”. At the Cannes Film Festival, it premiered to a 13-minute standing ovation.
I don’t know about Ms Moore’s “finest hour”, but I found it a challenging two hours, and was worried that my judgement was so out of kilter with people who know more about movies than I do.
How could I find the film so curiously unconnective, and so chaotically, implausibly plotted, when others, I discovered subsequently, found it so powerful? “The work of a filmmaker with vision,” wrote Variety magazine. “The best and maddest film of the year so far,” said the Evening Standard’s film critic. The Daily Telegraph called it “a humdinger of a satirical horror-thriller, by turns hilarious, affecting and jaw-droppingly grotesque”.
I didn’t think it was funny or touching, I found it so lacking in connection that I’d forgotten all about it the minute I left the cinema, and, as for grotesque, it was less shock-horror than pastiche, less Sam Peckinpah than the Monty Python spoof of his blood-soaked movies. As The Substance dissolved in to its frenzied, gruesome climax, I found myself not repulsed or shocked – but bored, hoping it would all end soon.
But you shouldn’t care about my opinion, of course, and it is definitely a virtue of the film that it has excited such strong reactions from critics and viewers alike. Some have thought it a classic; others have walked out. But I couldn’t help feeling that The Substance may have missed an opportunity to tackle one of the most important topics of our age – body dysmorphia – in a more serious way. More satire, less slapstick.
The basic premise of the film is that an ageing and out-of-favour TV fitness guru (Moore) finds a black-market drug that, through one injection, could create a better, younger version of herself. She’s unaware of the horrifying side effects, however. No need for a spoiler alert, and you don’t need to work too hard on the allegory: whether it’s cosmetic surgery, or Ozempic, we live in a world where the pressure to halt the ravages of time, and to look younger or thinner, is all pervasive, and so many people take this path without regard to the consequences.
The fact that Demi Moore, looking many years less than her real age of 61, was prepared to be the vehicle for this idea, gives it a particular piquancy.
While some people may feel that its central message is forfeited in the quest for shock and awe, “The Substance” may turn out to be an important movie, in that, one level, it is the first proper exposition on the mores of Ozempic, a wonder drug which appears to be too good to be true. What was developed as a treatment for diabetes is being used all over the world as a weight-loss drug, and it does yield impressive results. Still in its relative infancy, however, we do not fully understand its long-term side effects.
The Substance, for all its shortcomings, takes aim at the true cost of the modern obsession with body image. That this is done by a Hollywood movie, with a seemingly ageless star, only adds to its relevance and potency. We should avoid getting get sucked into the orgy of violent special effects, and look for the meaning, hidden or otherwise. Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Go see it.
